All history is present history in the sense that the concerns of the present are bound somehow to affect the way history is studied and written. All history is also personal, since it is impossible to avoid the influence of one's own opinions and pre...
Thomas Pynchon surely inaugurated or crystallized a new genre in 1963 when he published 'V.' The seriocomic mystery or thriller with one foot set in the present and one in various historical eras received its postmodern baptism from Pynchon.
I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully.
The Thames Torso murders almost fell into my lap. After deciding to use a real historical crime as the focus for the book, I went to Google and searched for unsolved murders in Victorian London, and they basically popped out at me about halfway down ...
Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.
I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I'd have to say I'd like to live in the future - I want to see where these centuries of change are leading us.
Historical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted, indeed, hardly think about, can lead to tremendous mistakes.
The evolution of life, and the evolutionary origin of mankind, are scientifically established as firmly and completely as any historical event not witnessed by human observers. Any concession to anti-evolutionists, suggesting that there are scientifi...
Today is indeed an historic occasion when as a first chair-in-office woman I hand over to another woman chair in office, your Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in the presence of a woman head of the Commonwealth, Her Royal Highness, Her Majesty the Quee...
Certainly in the Capitol you do get moments were you sort of take a deep breath and think of all the historic figures who have been in that building, like Abraham Lincoln, who have stood right in those same rooms to make the landmark decisions.
Every year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books will probably not be suffering water damage in the basements of their authors' houses 20 years from now. But hist...
The bourgeoisie...by its imperialist methods of appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds power, and does not wish to...
We adopted a focused strategy of core businesses in Citicorp that play to our unique historic strengths as a global bank that will provide strong growth and attractive returns over the long-term... And we've identified non-core assets we have shed.
I was living in Paris, which is a very beautiful, very wonderful place, but a tight place as a city, a tight place culturally. Its people are very brilliant, thoughtful, the place functions, but it's a historical place in some ways, like a big museum...
With high fashion, it's a performance. You're trying to interpret a fantasy in a very physical way, and you really are playing a character. I've played men, dead people, famous people, historical icons, and it's no mean feat. It's quite an insular ex...
Respect can be as elusive as the unicorn. I know something of this because I write books that are set in the Middle Ages, and the historical novel is often seen as the unwanted stepchild in the fictional family. I know even more about respect - or th...
I hope that Americans will give careful and well-informed thought to root causes and historical realities, in which case I think they will question why a supposedly 'legitimate' state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject...
Every hope of successive generations of scholars that order might be constructed from the chaotic mess of medical nomenclature has been frustrated. Even diseases recognized in the same historical period have been given names based on characteristics ...
I can read a newspaper article, and it might trigger something else in my mind. I often like to choose in historical fiction things or subject matter I don't feel have been given a fair shake in history.
'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but al...
I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history...
